As today is the first day I've ever posted any photies on this forum (in the Sheffield section I'm afraid pals) I suppose I should put my preference on record:

C - I give permission for any of the photos or pictures which I post, or have previously posted, on this site only to be used by any member of this forum for non-profit, urban development related purposes but wish to be credited where possible and wish to be informed if my images have been used.

I'm sure that part of the landing stage is not being demolished, and that hut may possibly be staying. I could be wrong though. We will find out in Feb/March when the stage sections are floated into place.

BBC Radio Merseyside's Claire Hamilton caught up with Alan McKernan to find out more about the Unfamiliar Journeys Exhibition and the free digital photography courses.

"It's going to be an opportunity to discuss photography and to encourage people to get out there and take better pictures for themselves.

"I'm encouraging people to think before they actually make a photograph and the emphasis will be on 'making' an effective photograph rather than 'taking' a photograph. And hopefully I'll be helping to think more effectively about composition and about the way in which they approach the area they want to photograph and the subjects they are going to photograph... and also an appreciation of the light quality because photography means quite literally drawing with light".

Your style is quite striking... very structured. Was that a conscious decision that you made, that that was the way you were going to make a photograph?
"I think carefully about the composition in terms of the buildings, the angles to include which plans of the building to include taking into account highlights and shadows and making the shadows work for me, so that the shadows although they may not contain any fine detail are actually very much part of the structure of the photograph.

"Most of my photographs, in fact all that are on display at Radio Merseyside, all of the photographs are completely devoid of people. They just concentrate on the buildings themselves, the structure, the architecture and the landscape, as though we've got a depopulated Merseyside which is a bit unusual".

Why didn't you want to have people in your photos?
"It was an attempt so that people would concentrate on the buildings themselves and upon the landscape rather than perhaps looking to see if they can recognise anybody in the picture. So it is a different take on what might otherwise be a familiar viewpoint or a familiar place. It's just looking literally in a different light, when there are no people about and also no traffic, no cars, just street furniture, the lamposts, the fences and the buildings themselve"s.

The Unfamiliar Journeys exhibition runs at the BBC Performance Space on Hanover Street until the end of March.

To book a place on a free digital photography course please contact Radio Merseyside on 0151 708 5500.

I know what he means about taking photos with no people in shot and especially no cars, it makes for a more unreal effect, and some shots can be timeless, especially when he catches those strange shadows. I have learn't something already and will try and obtain great shadows, and maybe the occasional spooky spectre of a being, who may be from the past.

Just what i have been thinking and getting vibes about, how can they stop peoples freedom to take photographs of and in public places. Read an article about a fella in San Francisco, who takes thousands of pictures a year, and due to "The War on terror" he has been abused by police/security guards for taking photos. I will sign this petition now.

Signed it and will forward it - this is total madness, I'm so glad we've got these email petitions (perhaps we do still live in a democracy after all?)! I will forward this to everyone I know, some major art and photography groups should get behind this if they haven't already. This government is nuts and I refuse to live in a climate of fear and I will actively break this law if it ever comes to pass as I would relish the opportunity to stand before a court and let them know exactly how pathetic this law is... (he says, from the relative safety of his computer screen...)

And while we're on petitions let's scrap the illegal and unfair inheritance tax too!

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